Voice Onset Time (VOT) An Animated and Narrated Glossary of Terms used in Linguistics presents.

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Presentation on theme: "Voice Onset Time (VOT) An Animated and Narrated Glossary of Terms used in Linguistics presents."— Presentation transcript:

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Voice Onset Time (VOT) An Animated and Narrated Glossary of Terms used in Linguistics presents

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Slide 2 Basic Idea Voice Onset Time (VOT) is refers to the time interval between the release of a stop and the beginning of vocal fold vibration. The possible existence of this interval is caused by the fact that the voicing and closure mechanisms are distinct.

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Slide 3 Creation of closure The production of oral stops involves a complete closure of the articulators so that airflow is completely obstructed. The oral closures occur at the region which is above the larynx

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Slide 4 Vibration of vocal folds Where does voicing take place ? Voicing occurs at the larynx which houses the vocal folds Voiced: The vocal folds are close together loosely so they can vibrate Voiceless: The vocal folds are wide apart so that air passes freely.

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Slide 5 Closing and Voicing As the closing and voicing mechanisms are distinct, so their operations may have a temporal mismatch, measured in milliseconds (ms) or seconds (s). VOT only concerns stops that are followed by voiced segments.

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Slide 11 VOT & Glottal Stops Glottal stops are formed by closure of vocal folds. Glottal stops can have VOT values too, but the value is never negative. Voicing (vibration of vocal folds) can coincide with release of that closure, or lag after it; but never precede it. –“egg” in English is sometimes pronounced with a glottal stop onset. –Coughing is essentially glottal stop with a positive VOT, accompanied by large outburst of air.

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Slide 13 Categorical Perception Cantonese and English make a two-way voicing distinction for plosives along the continuum with very different VOT boundary values.  Cantonese and English speakers perceive discrete categories of voicing, though VOT itself is measured along a temporal continuum. This phenomenon is referred to as categorical perception.

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Slide 14 Endnote Other languages may make more than a two-way distinction in terms of VOT –E.g. Hindi, Korean, etc Voicing distinction of plosives can also come about from phonetic cues other than VOT. –E.g. Malay, where there is some evidence that voicing distinction comes from the onset frequency of F1 (first formant) of the following vowel.

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The End Wee, Lian-Hee and Winnie H.Y. Cheung (2009) An animated and narrated glossary of terms used in Linguistics. Hong Kong Baptist University.